THE FALL OF THE HOUSE OF USHER

[Burton’s Gentleman’s Magazine, September, 1839; 1840; 1845.]

Son cœur est un luth suspendu;

Sitôt qu’on le touche il résonne.

De Béranger.

DURING the whole of a dull, dark, and soundless day in the autumn of the year, when the
clouds hung oppressively low in the heavens, I had been passing alone, on horseback, through a singularly dreary tract of country; and
at length found myself, as the shades of the evening drew on, within view of the melancholy House of Usher. I know not how it was
— but, with the first glimpse of the building, a sense of insufferable gloom pervaded my spirit. I say insufferable; for the
feeling was unrelieved by any of that half-pleasurable, because poetic, sentiment, with which the mind usually receives even the
sternest natural images of the desolate or terrible. I looked upon the scene before me — upon the mere house, and the simple
landscape features of the domain — upon the bleak walls — upon the vacant eye-like windows — upon a few rank sedges
— and upon a few white trunks of decayed trees — with an utter depression of soul which I can compare to no earthly
sensation more properly than to the after-dream of the reveller upon opium — the bitter lapse into every-day life — the
hideous dropping off of the veil. There was an iciness, a sinking, a sickening of the heart — an unredeemed dreariness of thought
which no goading of the imagination could torture into aught of the sublime. What was it — I paused to think — what was it
[page 274:] that so unnerved me in the contemplation of the House of Usher? It
was a mystery all insoluble; nor could I grapple with the shadowy fancies that crowded upon me as I pondered. I was forced to fall back
upon the unsatisfactory conclusion, that while, beyond doubt, there are combinations of very simple natural objects which have
the power of thus affecting us, still the analysis of this power lies among considerations beyond our depth. It was possible, I
reflected, that a mere different arrangement of the particulars of the scene, of the details of the picture, would be sufficient to
modify, or perhaps to annihilate its capacity for sorrowful impression; and, acting upon this idea, I reined my horse to the precipitous
brink of a black and lurid tarn that lay in unruffled lustre by the dwelling, and gazed down — but with a shudder even more
thrilling than before — upon the re-modelled and inverted images of the gray sedge, and the ghastly tree-stems, and the vacant and
eye-like windows.

Nevertheless, in this mansion of gloom I now proposed to myself a sojourn of some weeks. Its proprietor, Roderick
Usher, had been one of my boon companions in boyhood; but many years had elapsed since our last meeting. A letter, however, had lately
reached me in a distant part of the country — a letter from him — which, in its wildly importunate nature, had admitted of
no other than a personal reply. The MS. gave evidence of nervous agitation. The writer spoke of acute bodily illness — of a mental
disorder which oppressed him — and of an earnest desire to see me, as his best, and indeed his only personal friend, with a view
of attempting, by the cheerfulness of my society, some alleviation of his malady. It was the manner in which all this, and much more,
was said — [page 275:] it was the apparent heart that went with his
request — which allowed me no room for hesitation; and I accordingly obeyed forthwith what I still considered a very singular
summons.

Although, as boys, we had been even intimate associates, yet I really knew little of my friend. His reserve had been
always excessive and habitual. I was aware, however, that his very ancient family had been noted, time out of mind, for a peculiar
sensibility of temperament, displaying itself, through long ages, in many works of exalted art, and manifested, of late, in repeated
deeds of munificent yet unobtrusive charity, as well as in a passionate devotion to the intricacies, perhaps even more than to the
orthodox and easily recognisable beauties, of musical science. I had learned, too, the very remarkable fact, that the stem of the Usher
race, all time-honored as it was, had put forth, at no period, any enduring branch; in other words, that the entire family lay in the
direct line of descent, and had always, with very trifling and very temporary variation, so lain. It was this deficiency, I considered,
while running over in thought the perfect keeping of the character of the premises with the accredited character of the people, and
while speculating upon the possible influence which the one, in the long lapse of centuries, might have exercised upon the other —
it was this deficiency, perhaps, of collateral issue, and the consequent undeviating transmission, from sire to son, of the patrimony
with the name, which had, at length, so identified the two as to merge the original title of the estate in the quaint and equivocal
appellation of the “House of Usher” — an appellation which seemed to include, in the minds of the peasantry who used
it, both the family and the family mansion. [page 276:]

I have said that the sole effect of my somewhat childish experiment — that of looking down within the tarn
— had been to deepen the first singular impression. There can be no doubt that the consciousness of the rapid increase of my
superstition — for why should I not so term it? — served mainly to accelerate the increase itself. Such, I have long known,
is the paradoxical law of all sentiments having terror as a basis. And it might have been for this reason only, that, when I again
uplifted my eyes to the house itself, from its image in the pool, there grew in my mind a strange fancy — a fancy so ridiculous,
indeed, that I but mention it to show the vivid force of the sensations which oppressed me. I had so worked upon my imagination as
really to believe that about the whole mansion and domain there hung an atmosphere peculiar to themselves and their immediate vicinity
— an atmosphere which had no affinity with the air of heaven, but which had reeked up from the decayed trees, and the gray wall,
and the silent tarn — a pestilent and mystic vapor, dull, sluggish, faintly discernible, and leaden-hued.

Shaking off from my spirit what must have been a dream, I scanned more narrowly the real aspect of the building.
Its principal feature seemed to be that of an excessive antiquity. The discoloration of ages had been great. Minute fungi overspread the
whole exterior, hanging in a fine tangled web-work from the eaves. Yet all this was apart from any extraordinary dilapidation. No
portion of the masonry had fallen; and there appeared to be a wild inconsistency between its still perfect adaptation of parts, and the
crumbling condition of the individual stones. In this there was much that reminded me of the specious totality of old wood-work which
has rotted for long years in some [page 277:] neglected vault, with no disturbance
from the breath of the external air. Beyond this indication of extensive decay, however, the fabric gave little token of instability.
Perhaps the eye of a scrutinizing observer might have discovered a barely perceptible fissure, which, extending from the roof of the
building in front, made its way down the wall in a zigzag direction, until it became lost in the sullen waters of the tarn.

Noticing these things, I rode over a short causeway to the house. A servant in waiting took my horse, and I entered the
Gothic archway of the hall. A valet, of stealthy step, thence conducted me, in silence, through many dark and intricate passages in my
progress to the studio of his master. Much that I encountered on the way contributed, I know not how, to heighten the vague
sentiments of which I have already spoken. While the objects around me — while the carvings of the ceilings, the sombre tapestries
of the walls, the ebon blackness of the floors, and the phantasmagoric armorial trophies which rattled as I strode, were but matters to
which, or to such as which, I had been accustomed from my infancy — while I hesitated not to acknowledge how familiar was all this
— I still wondered to find how unfamiliar were the fancies which ordinary images were stirring up. On one of the staircases, I met
the physician of the family. His countenance, I thought, wore a mingled expression of low cunning and perplexity. He accosted me with
trepidation and passed on. The valet now threw open a door and ushered me into the presence of his master.

The room in which I found myself was very large and lofty. The windows were long, narrow, and pointed, and at so vast a
distance from the black oaken floor as to be altogether inaccessible from within. Feeble [page 278:] gleams of encrimsoned light made their way through the trellissed panes, and served to render
sufficiently distinct the more prominent objects around; the eye, however, struggled in vain to reach the remoter angles of the chamber,
or the recesses of the vaulted and fretted ceiling. Dark draperies hung upon the walls. The general furniture was profuse, comfortless,
antique, and tattered. Many books and musical instruments lay scattered about, but failed to give any vitality to the scene. I felt that
I breathed an atmosphere of sorrow. An air of stern, deep, and irredeemable gloom hung over and pervaded all.

Upon my entrance, Usher arose from a sofa on which he had been lying at full length, and greeted me with a vivacious
warmth which had much in it, I at first thought, of an overdone cordiality — of the constrained effort of the ennuyé
man of the world. A glance, however, at his countenance, convinced me of his perfect sincerity. We sat down; and for some moments, while
he spoke not, I gazed upon him with a feeling half of pity, half of awe. Surely, man had never before so terribly altered, in so brief a
period, as had Roderick Usher! It was with difficulty that I could bring myself to admit the identity of the wan being before me with
the companion of my early boyhood. Yet the character of his face had been at all times remarkable. A cadaverousness of complexion; an
eye large, liquid, and luminous beyond comparison; lips somewhat thin and very pallid, but of a surpassingly beautiful curve; a nose of
a delicate Hebrew model, but with a breadth of nostril unusual in similar formations; a finely moulded chin, speaking, in its want of
prominence, of a want of moral energy; hair of a more than web-like softness and tenuity; these [page 279:] features, with an inordinate expansion above the regions of the temple, made up altogether a
countenance not easily to be forgotten. And now in the mere exaggeration of the prevailing character of these features, and of the
expression they were wont to convey, lay so much of change that I doubted to whom I spoke. The now ghastly pallor of the skin, and the
now miraculous lustre of the eye, above all things startled and even awed me. The silken hair, too, had been suffered to grow all
unheeded, and as, in its wild gossamer texture, it floated rather than fell about the face, I could not, even with effort, connect its
Arabesque expression with any idea of simple humanity.

In the manner of my friend I was at once struck with an incoherence — an inconsistency; and I soon found this to
arise from a series of feeble and futile struggles to overcome an habitual trepidancy — an excessive nervous agitation. For
something of this nature I had indeed been prepared, no less by his letter, than by reminiscences of certain boyish traits, and by
conclusions deduced from his peculiar physical conformation and temperament. His action was alternately vivacious and sullen. His voice
varied rapidly from a tremulous indecision (when the animal spirits seemed utterly in abeyance) to that species of energetic concision
— that abrupt, weighty, unhurried, and hollow-sounding enunciation — that leaden, self-balanced and perfectly modulated
guttural utterance, which may be observed in the lost drunkard, or the irreclaimable eater of opium, during the periods of his most
intense excitement.

It was thus that he spoke of the object of my visit, of his earnest desire to see me, and of the solace he [page 280:] expected me to afford him. He entered, at some length, into what he
conceived to be the nature of his malady. It was, he said, a constitutional and a family evil, and one for which he despaired to find a
remedy — a mere nervous affection, he immediately added, which would undoubtedly soon pass off. It displayed itself in a host of
unnatural sensations. Some of these, as he detailed them, interested and bewildered me; although, perhaps, the terms, and the general
manner of the narration had their weight. He suffered much from a morbid acuteness of the senses; the most insipid food was alone
endurable; he could wear only garments of certain texture; the odors of all flowers were oppressive; his eyes were tortured by even a
faint light; and there were but peculiar sounds, and these from stringed instruments, which did not inspire him with horror.

To an anomalous species of terror I found him a bounden slave. “I shall perish,” said he, “I
must perish in this deplorable folly. Thus, thus, and not otherwise, shall I be lost. I dread the events of the future, not in
themselves, but in their results. I shudder at the thought of any, even the most trivial, incident, which may operate upon this
intolerable agitation of soul. I have, indeed, no abhorrence of danger, except in its absolute effect — in terror. In this
unnerved — in this pitiable condition — I feel that the period will sooner or later arrive when I must abandon life and
reason together, in some struggle with the grim phantasm, FEAR.”

I learned, moreover, at intervals, and through broken and equivocal hints, another singular feature of his mental
condition. He was enchained by certain superstitious impressions in regard to the dwelling which he [page 281:] tenanted, and whence, for many years, he had never ventured forth — in regard to an influence
whose supposititious force was conveyed in terms too shadowy here to be re-stated — an influence which some peculiarities in the
mere form and substance of his family mansion, had, by dint of long sufferance, he said, obtained over his spirit — an effect
which the physique of the gray walls and turrets, and of the dim tarn into which they all looked down, had, at length, brought
about upon the morale of his existence.

He admitted, however, although with hesitation, that much of the peculiar gloom which thus afflicted him could be
traced to a more natural and far more palpable origin — to the severe and long-continued illness — indeed to the evidently
approaching dissolution — of a tenderly beloved sister — his sole companion for long years — his last and only
relative on earth. “Her decease,” he said, with a bitterness which I can never forget, “would leave him (him the
hopeless and the frail) the last of the ancient race of the Ushers.” While he spoke, the lady Madeline (for so was she called)
passed slowly through a remote portion of the apartment, and, without having noticed my presence, disappeared. I regarded her with an
utter astonishment not unmingled with dread — and yet I found it impossible to account for such feelings. A sensation of stupor
oppressed me, as my eyes followed her retreating steps. When a door, at length, closed upon her, my glance sought instinctively and
eagerly the countenance of the brother — but he had buried his face in his hands, and I could only perceive that a far more than
ordinary wanness had overspread the emaciated fingers through which trickled many passionate tears.

The disease of the lady Madeline had long baffled the [page 282:]
skill of her physicians. A settled apathy, a gradual wasting away of the person, and frequent although transient affections of a
partially cataleptical character, were the unusual diagnosis. Hitherto she had steadily borne up against the pressure of her malady, and
had not betaken herself finally to bed; but, on the closing in of the evening of my arrival at the house, she succumbed (as her brother
told me at night with inexpressible agitation) to the prostrating power of the destroyer; and I learned that the glimpse I had obtained
of her person would thus probably be the last I should obtain — that the lady, at least while living, would be seen by me no more.

For several days ensuing, her name was unmentioned by either Usher or myself: and during this period I was busied in
earnest endeavors to alleviate the melancholy of my friend. We painted and read together; or I listened, as if in a dream, to the wild
improvisations of his speaking guitar. And thus, as a closer and still closer intimacy admitted me more unreservedly into the recesses
of his spirit, the more bitterly did I perceive the futility of all attempt at cheering a mind from which darkness, as if an inherent
positive quality, poured forth upon all objects of the moral and physical universe, in one unceasing radiation of gloom.

I shall ever bear about me a memory of the many solemn hours I thus spent alone with the master of the House of Usher.
Yet I should fail in any attempt to convey an idea of the exact character of the studies, or of the occupations, in which he involved
me, or led me the way. An excited and highly distempered ideality threw a sulphureous [[sulphurous]] lustre over all. His long
improvised dirges will ring forever in my ears. Among other things, I hold painfully in mind a certain [page 283:] singular perversion and amplification of the wild air of the last waltz of Von Weber. From
the paintings over which his elaborate fancy brooded, and which grew, touch by touch, into vaguenesses at which I shuddered the more
thrillingly, because I shuddered knowing not why; — from these paintings (vivid as their images now are before me) I would in vain
endeavor to educe more than a small portion which should lie within the compass of merely written words. By the utter simplicity, by the
nakedness of his designs, he arrested and overawed attention. If ever mortal painted an idea, that mortal was Roderick Usher. For me at
least — in the circumstances then surrounding me — there arose out of the pure abstractions which the hypochondriac
contrived to throw upon his canvass, an intensity of intolerable awe, no shadow of which felt I ever yet in the contemplation of the
certainly glowing yet too concrete reveries of Fuseli.

One of the phantasmagoric conceptions of my friend, partaking not so rigidly of the spirit of abstraction, may be
shadowed forth, although feebly, in words. A small picture presented the interior of an immensely long and rectangular vault or tunnel,
with low walls, smooth, white, and without interruption or device. Certain accessory points of the design served well to convey the idea
that this excavation lay at an exceeding depth below the surface of the earth. No outlet was observed in any portion of its vast extent,
and no torch, or other artificial source of light was discernible; yet a flood of intense rays rolled throughout, and bathed the whole
in a ghastly and inappropriate splendor.

I have just spoken of that morbid condition of the auditory nerve which rendered all music intolerable to the sufferer,
with the exception of certain effects of [page 284:] stringed instruments. It was,
perhaps, the narrow limits to which he thus confined himself upon the guitar, which gave birth, in great measure, to the fantastic
character of his performances. But the fervid facility of his impromptus could not be so accounted for. They must have
been, and were, in the notes, as well as in the words of his wild fantasias (for he not unfrequently accompanied himself with rhymed
verbal improvisations), the result of that intense mental collectedness and concentration to which I have previously alluded as
observable only in particular moments of the highest artificial excitement. The words of one of these rhapsodies I have easily
remembered. I was, perhaps, the more forcibly impressed with it, as he gave it, because, in the under or mystic current of its meaning,
I fancied that I perceived, and for the first time, a full consciousness on the part of Usher, of the tottering of his lofty reason upon
her throne. The verses, which were entitled “The Haunted Palace,” ran very nearly, if not accurately, thus:

I well remember that suggestions arising from this ballad, led us into a train of thought wherein there became manifest
an opinion of Usher’s which I mention not so much on account of its novelty, (for other men*
have thought thus,) as on account of the pertinacity with which he maintained it. This opinion, in its general form, was that of the
sentience of all vegetable things. But, in his disordered fancy, the idea had assumed a more daring character, and trespassed, under
certain conditions, upon the kingdom of inorganization. I lack words to express the full extent, or the earnest abandon of his
persuasion. The belief, however, was connected (as I have previously hinted) with the gray stones of the home of his forefathers. The
conditions of the sentience had been here, he imagined, fulfilled in the method of collocation of these stones — in the order of
their arrangement, as well as in that of the many fungi which overspread them, and of the decayed trees which stood around
— above all, in the long undisturbed endurance of this arrangement, and in its reduplication in the still waters of the tarn. Its
evidence — the evidence of the sentience — was to be seen, he said, (and I here started as he spoke,) in the gradual yet
certain condensation of an atmosphere of their own about the waters and the walls. The result was discoverable, he added, in that
silent, yet importunate and terrible influence which for centuries had moulded the destinies of his family, and which made him
what I now saw [page 287:] him — what he was. Such opinions need no comment,
and I will make none.

Our books — the books which, for years, had formed no small portion of the mental existence of the invalid
— were, as might be supposed, in strict keeping with this character of phantasm. We pored together over such works as the Ververt
et Chartreuse of Gresset; the Belphegor of Machiavelli; the Heaven and Hell of Swedenborg; the Subterranean Voyage of Nicholas Klimm by
Holberg; the Chiromancy of Robert Flud, of Jean D’Indaginé, and of De la Chambre; the Journey into the Blue Distance of
Tieck; and the City of the Sun of Campanella. One favorite volume was a small octavo edition of the Directorium Inquisitorium
[[Inquisitorum]], by the Dominican Eymeric de Gironne; and there were passages in Pomponius Mela, about the old African Satyrs
and œgipans, over which Usher would sit dreaming for hours. His chief delight, however, was found in the perusal of an exceedingly
rare and curious book in quarto Gothic — the manual of a forgotten church — the Vigiliae Mortuorum secundum Chorum
Ecclesiae Maguntinae.

I could not help thinking of the wild ritual of this work, and of its probable influence upon the hypochondriac, when,
one evening, having informed me abruptly that the lady Madeline was no more, he stated his intention of preserving her corpse for a
fortnight, (previously to its final interment,) in one of the numerous vaults within the main walls of the building. The worldly reason,
however, assigned for this singular proceeding, was one which I did not feel at liberty to dispute. The brother had been led to his
resolution (so he told me) by consideration of the unusual character of the malady of the deceased, of certain obtrusive [page 288:] and eager inquiries on the part of her medical men, and of the remote
and exposed situation of the burial-ground of the family. I will not deny that when I called to mind the sinister countenance of the
person whom I met upon the staircase, on the day of my arrival at the house, I had no desire to oppose what I regarded as at best but a
harmless, and by no means an unnatural, precaution.

At the request of Usher, I personally aided him in the arrangements for the temporary entombment. The body having been
encoffined, we two alone bore it to its rest. The vault in which we placed it (and which had been so long unopened that our torches,
half smothered in its oppressive atmosphere, gave us little opportunity for investigation) was small, damp, and entirely without means
of admission for light; lying, at great depth, immediately beneath that portion of the building in which was my own sleeping apartment.
It had been used, apparently, in remote feudal times, for the worst purposes of a donjon-keep, and, in later days, as a place of deposit
for powder, or some other highly combustible substance, as a portion of its floor, and the whole interior of a long archway through
which we reached it, were carefully sheathed with copper. The door, of massive iron, had been, also, similarly protected. Its immense
weight caused an unusually sharp grating sound, as it moved upon its hinges.

Having deposited our mournful burden upon tressels within this region of horror, we partially turned aside the yet
unscrewed lid of the coffin, and looked upon the face of the tenant. A striking similitude between the brother and sister now first
arrested my attention; and Usher, divining, perhaps, my thoughts, [page 289:]
murmured out some few words from which I learned that the deceased and himself had been twins, and that sympathies of a scarcely
intelligible nature had always existed between them. Our glances, however, rested not long upon the dead — for we could not regard
her unawed. The disease which had thus entombed the lady in the maturity of youth, had left, as usual in all maladies of a strictly
cataleptical character, the mockery of a faint blush upon the bosom and the face, and that suspiciously lingering smile upon the lip
which is so terrible in death. We replaced and screwed down the lid, and, having secured the door of iron, made our way, with toil, into
the scarcely less gloomy apartments of the upper portion of the house.

And now, some days of bitter grief having elapsed, an observable change came over the features of the mental disorder
of my friend. His ordinary manner had vanished. His ordinary occupations were neglected or forgotten. He roamed from chamber to chamber
with hurried, unequal, and objectless step. The pallor of his countenance had assumed, if possible, a more ghastly hue — but the
luminousness of his eye had utterly gone out. The once occasional huskiness of his tone was heard no more; and a tremulous quaver, as if
of extreme terror, habitually characterized his utterance. There were times, indeed, when I thought his unceasingly agitated mind was
laboring with some oppressive secret, to divulge which he struggled for the necessary courage. At times, again, I was obliged to resolve
all into the mere inexplicable vagaries of madness, for I beheld him gazing upon vacancy for long hours, in an attitude of the
profoundest attention, as if listening to some imaginary sound. It was no wonder that his condition terrified — that it [page 290:] infected me. I felt creeping upon me, by slow yet certain degrees, the
wild influences of his own fantastic yet impressive superstitions.

It was, especially, upon retiring to bed late in the night of the seventh or eighth day after the placing of the lady
Madeline within the donjon, that I experienced the full power of such feelings. Sleep came not near my couch — while the hours
waned and waned away. I struggled to reason off the nervousness which had dominion over me. I endeavored to believe that much, if not
all of what I felt, was due to the bewildering influence of the gloomy furniture of the room — of the dark and tattered draperies,
which, tortured into motion by the breath of a rising tempest, swayed fitfully to and fro upon the walls, and rustled uneasily about the
decorations of the bed. But my efforts were fruitless. An irrepressible tremor gradually pervaded my frame; and, at length, there sat
upon my very heart an incubus of utterly causeless alarm. Shaking this off with a gasp and a struggle, I uplifted myself upon the
pillows, and, peering earnestly within the intense darkness of the chamber, harkened — I know not why, except that an instinctive
spirit prompted me — to certain low and indefinite sounds which came, through the pauses of the storm, at long intervals, I knew
not whence. Overpowered by an intense sentiment of horror, unaccountable yet unendurable, I threw on my clothes with haste (for I felt
that I should sleep no more during the night), and endeavored to arouse myself from the pitiable condition into which I had fallen, by
pacing rapidly to and fro through the apartment.

I had taken but few turns in this manner, when a light step on an adjoining staircase arrested my attention. [page 291:] I presently recognised it as that of Usher. In an instant afterward he
rapped, with a gentle touch, at my door, and entered, bearing a lamp. His countenance was, as usual, cadaverously wan — but,
moreover, there was a species of mad hilarity in his eyes — an evidently restrained hysteria in his whole demeanor. His air
appalled me — but anything was preferable to the solitude which I had so long endured, and I even welcomed his presence as a
relief.

“And you have not seen it?” he said abruptly, after having stared about him for some moments in silence
— “you have not then seen it? — but, stay! you shall.” Thus speaking, and having carefully shaded his lamp, he
hurried to one of the casements, and threw it freely open to the storm.

The impetuous fury of the entering gust nearly lifted us from our feet. It was, indeed, a tempestuous yet sternly
beautiful night, and one wildly singular in its terror and its beauty. A whirlwind had apparently collected its force in our vicinity;
for there were frequent and violent alterations in the direction of the wind; and the exceeding density of the clouds (which hung so low
as to press upon the turrets of the house) did not prevent our perceiving the life-like velocity with which they flew careering from all
points against each other, without passing away into the distance. I say that even their exceeding density did not prevent our
perceiving this — yet we had no glimpse of the moon or stars — nor was there any flashing forth of the lightning. But the
under surfaces of the huge masses of agitated vapor, as well as all terrestrial objects immediately around us, were glowing in the
unnatural light of a faintly luminous and distinctly visible gaseous exhalation which hung about and enshrouded the mansion. [page 292:]

“You must not — you shall not behold this!” said I, shudderingly, to Usher, as I led him, with a
gentle violence, from the window to a seat. “These appearances, which bewilder you, are merely electrical phenomena not uncommon
— or it may be that they have their ghastly origin in the rank miasma of the tarn. Let us close this casement; — the air is
chilling and dangerous to your frame. Here is one of your favorite romances. I will read, and you shall listen; — and so we will
pass away this terrible night together.”

The antique volume which I had taken up was the “Mad Trist” of Sir Launcelot Canning; but I had called it a
favorite of Usher’s more in sad jest than in earnest; for, in truth, there is little in its uncouth and unimaginative prolixity
which could have had interest for the lofty and spiritual ideality of my friend. It was, however, the only book immediately at hand; and
I indulged a vague hope that the excitement which now agitated the hypochondriac, might find relief (for the history of mental disorder
is full of similar anomalies) even in the extremeness of the folly which I should read. Could I have judged, indeed, by the wild
overstrained air of vivacity with which he harkened, or apparently harkened, to the words of the tale, I might well have congratulated
myself upon the success of my design.

I had arrived at that well-known portion of the story where Ethelred, the hero of the Trist, having sought in vain for
peaceable admission into the dwelling of the hermit, proceeds to make good an entrance by force. Here, it will be remembered, the words
of the narrative run thus:

“And Ethelred, who was by nature of a doughty heart, and who was now mighty withal, on account of the
powerfulness of the wine which he had drunken, [page 293:] waited no longer to hold
parley with the hermit, who, in sooth, was of an obstinate and maliceful turn, but, feeling the rain upon his shoulders, and fearing the
rising of the tempest, uplifted his mace outright, and, with blows, made quickly room in the plankings of the door for his gauntleted
hand; and now pulling therewith sturdily, he so cracked, and ripped, and tore all asunder, that the noise of the dry and hollow-sounding
wood alarummed and reverberated throughout the forest.”

At the termination of this sentence I started, and for a moment, paused; for it appeared to me (although I at once
concluded that my excited fancy had deceived me) — it appeared to me that, from some very remote portion of the mansion, there
came, indistinctly, to my ears, what might have been, in its exact similarity of character, the echo (but a stifled and dull one
certainly) of the very cracking and ripping sound which Sir Launcelot had so particularly described. It was, beyond doubt, the
coincidence alone which had arrested my attention; for, amid the rattling of the sashes of the casements, and the ordinary commingled
noises of the still increasing storm, the sound, in itself, had nothing, surely, which should have interested or disturbed me. I
continued the story:

“But the good champion Ethelred, now entering within the door, was sore enraged and amazed to perceive no signal
of the maliceful hermit; but, in the stead thereof, a dragon of a scaly and prodigious demeanor, and of a fiery tongue, which sate in
guard before a palace of gold, with a floor of silver; and upon the wall there hung a shield of shining brass with this legend enwritten
—

And Ethelred uplifted his mace, and struck upon the head of the dragon, which fell before him, and gave up his pesty
breath, with a shriek so horrid and harsh, and withal so piercing, that Ethelred had fain to close his ears with his hands against the
dreadful noise of it, the like whereof was never before heard.”

Here again I paused abruptly, and now with a feeling of wild amazement — for there could be no doubt whatever
that, in this instance, I did actually hear (although from what direction it proceeded I found it impossible to say) a low and
apparently distant, but harsh, protracted, and most unusual screaming or grating sound — the exact counterpart of what my fancy
had already conjured up for the dragon’s unnatural shriek as described by the romancer.

Oppressed, as I certainly was, upon the occurrence of this second and most extraordinary coincidence, by a thousand
conflicting sensations, in which wonder and extreme terror were predominant, I still retained sufficient presence of mind to avoid
exciting, by any observation, the sensitive nervousness of my companion. I was by no means certain that he had noticed the sounds in
question; although, assuredly, a strange alteration had, during the last few minutes, taken place in his demeanor. From a position
fronting my own, he had gradually brought round his chair, so as to sit with his face to the door of the chamber; and thus I could but
partially perceive his features, although I saw that his lips trembled as if he were murmuring inaudibly. His head had dropped upon his
breast — yet I knew that he was not asleep, from the wide and rigid opening of the eye as I caught a glance of it in profile. The
motion of his body, too, was at variance with this idea — for he rocked from side to side with a gentle yet constant and uniform
sway. Having rapidly taken notice of all this, I resumed the narrative of Sir Launcelot, which thus proceeded:

“And now, the champion, having escaped from the terrible fury of the dragon, bethinking himself of the brazen
shield, and of the breaking up of the enchantment which was upon it, removed the carcass from out of the way before him, and approached
valorously over the silver pavement of the castle to where the shield was upon the wall; which in sooth tarried not for his full coming,
but fell down at his feet upon the silver floor, with a mighty great and terrible ringing sound.”

No sooner had these syllables passed my lips, than — as if a shield of brass had indeed, at the moment, fallen
heavily upon a floor of silver — I became aware of a distinct, hollow, metallic, and clangorous, yet apparently muffled
reverberation. Completely unnerved, I leaped to my feet; but the measured rocking movement of Usher was undisturbed. I rushed to the
chair in which he sat. His eyes were bent fixedly before him, and throughout his whole countenance there reigned a stony rigidity. But,
as I placed my hand upon his shoulder, there came a strong shudder over his whole person; a sickly smile quivered about his lips; and I
saw that he spoke in a low, hurried, and gibbering murmur, as if unconscious of my presence. Bending closely over him, I at length drank
in the hideous import of his words.

“Not hear it? — yes, I hear it, and have heard it. Long — long — long — many
minutes, many hours, many days, have I heard it — yet I dared not — oh, pity me, miserable wretch that I am! — I dared
not — [page 296:] I dared not speak! We have put her living in the
tomb! Said I not that my senses were acute? I now tell you that I heard her first feeble movements in the hollow coffin. I
heard them — many, many days ago — yet I dared not — I dared not speak! And now — to-night —
Ethelred — ha! ha! — the breaking of the hermit’s door, and the death-cry of the dragon, and the clangor of the
shield! — say, rather, the rending of her coffin, and the grating of the iron hinges of her prison, and her struggles within the
coppered archway of the vault! Oh whither shall I fly? Will she not be here anon? Is she not hurrying to upbraid me for my haste? Have I
not heard her footstep on the stair? Do I not distinguish that heavy and horrible beating of her heart? Madman!” — here he
sprang furiously to his feet, and shrieked out his syllables, as if in the effort he were giving up his soul — “Madman! I
tell you that she now stands without the door!”

As if in the superhuman energy of his utterance there had been found the potency of a spell — the huge antique
pannels to which the speaker pointed, threw slowly back, upon the instant, their ponderous and ebony jaws. It was the work of the
rushing gust — but then without those doors there did stand the lofty and enshrouded figure of the lady Madeline of Usher.
There was blood upon her white robes, and the evidence of some bitter struggle upon every portion of her emaciated frame. For a moment
she remained trembling and reeling to and fro upon the threshold — then, with a low moaning cry, fell heavily inward upon the
person of her brother, and in her violent and now final death-agonies, bore him to the floor a corpse, and a victim to the terrors he
had anticipated. [page 297:]

From that chamber, and from that mansion, I fled aghast. The storm was still abroad in all its wrath as I found myself
crossing the old causeway. Suddenly there shot along the path a wild light, and I turned to see whence a gleam so unusual could have
issued; for the vast house and its shadows were alone behind me. The radiance was that of the full, setting, and blood-red moon, which
now shone vividly through that once barely-discernible fissure, of which I have before spoken as extending from the roof of the
building, in a zigzag direction, to the base. While I gazed, this fissure rapidly widened — there came a fierce breath of the
whirlwind — the entire orb of the satellite burst at once upon my sight — my brain reeled as I saw the mighty walls rushing
asunder — there was a long tumultuous shouting sound like the voice of a thousand waters — and the deep and dank tarn at my
feet closed sullenly and silently over the fragments of the “House of Usher.”

[[Footnotes]]

In the original printing, Harrison puts the textual note above the title, but only for tales in this volume. In the present text,
it has been placed under the title, to conform with the other volumes in the set. Page 298, which separates the present tale from
the one that follows it, is entirely blank.

For this one footnote, Harrison retains the use of an asterisk rather supplying a numeric value.